Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The textual features of fiction that appeal to readers: Emotion and abstractness.
In two studies we assessed whether simple surface-level textual features of fictional works predict their appeal to readers. Specifically, we focused on the potential role of emotional valence and arousal, the presence of affective themes (i.e., sex, religion, and death), and word concreteness and frequency. In Study 1, we compiled a corpus of 1,471 short stories posted to a creative writing website along with ratings of these stories by readers. Using word lexicons we quantified the textual features of these stories, and then examined whether any of these features predicted ratings using correlation and mixed-effects regr...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - September 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Quantifying the if, the when, and the what of the sublime: A survey and latent class analysis of incidence, emotions, and distinct varieties of personal sublime experiences.
Sublime encounters provide a compelling example of the peaks of our shared emotional and cognitive experiences. For centuries, these have been a target for philosophy and, more recently, for psychology, with its renewed focus on profound or aesthetic events. The sublime has been theoretically connected to multiple contexts, from interactions with overpowering nature, to beauty, music, even interpersonal engagements, and to multiple emotions—danger, awe, pleasure, fear—often with diametrically opposing arguments for what constitutes these events. However, despite this prolonged discussion, there is still a scarcity of a...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 26, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Pushing the boundaries of reality: Science fiction, creativity, and the moral imagination.
Past research suggests that reading science fiction (sci-fi) correlates not only with a propensity to think the impossible could become possible, but also with a tendency to say that morally taboo actions could be permissible in some circumstances (Black, Capps, & Barnes, 2018). Here, in a preregistered experimental study, we tested the immediate effects of exposure to sci-fi TV shows on moral imagination and creativity. Although there were no main effects of viewing sci-fi (compared to viewing realistic TV and a control), we found an interaction between condition and narrative engagement: in the sci-fi group only, partici...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Comments on comments by Cupchik (2019) and Jacobsen (2019).
In this response to comments by Cupchik (2019) and Jacobsen (2019), we address the points made and extend the discussion to raise a number of issues to consider in the quest for ecologically valid research on aesthetic emotions generated by music performances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts)
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Settings, sensors, and tasks: Comment on Scherer, Trznadel, Fantini, and Coutinho (2019).
Comments on article by Scherer et al. (see record 2018-16097-001). In their study, Scherer et al. explore the aesthetic experience of opera spectators using a 12-item fuzzy emotion questionnaire. Hence, they make a contribution to the emerging endeavors to conduct empirical aesthetic studies in the field. Laboratory studies of aesthetic appreciation may, to some extent, be limited with respect to ecological validity. Investigating aesthetic appreciation in the context of its usual occurrence—and, by association, investigating aesthetic appreciation in a fully ecologically valid way—is a desideratum of today’s researc...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Reflections on relations between affective responses and operatic intentions: Comment on Scherer, Trznadel, Fantini, and Coutinho (2019).
Comments on an article by Klaus Scherer et al. (see record 2018-16097-001). Scherer and his colleagues examined the responses of audiences to operas in situ, during dress rehearsals. They are interested in the “routes,” or cognitive and emotional pathways, that people follow as they pass through performances understood against the background of knowledge, predispositions, and affective states. This concern for ecological validity in response to live performances is laudable but it bears noting that Hollywood companies use EEG measures of arousal to assess the impact of scenes in movies under development. Film producers...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Editors’ introduction August 2019.
In this editors' introduction, the authors note that this issue of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts has a special section this month on reactions to opera performances, as well as excellent articles spanning aesthetic reasoning, creativity, and involvement in art making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts)
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - August 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The relationship among different types of arts engagement, empathy, and prosocial behavior.
The arts have long been promoted as helping people learn and care about situations and people other than themselves. However, large-scale research on this question is sparse. The current paper uses four national datasets to examine how arts engagement is associated with prosocial traits and behaviors. We ask the following: Are people who create or consume art more prosocial (e.g., more likely to volunteer and make charitable donations)? Does this depend upon art genre (visual arts, performing arts, or literature)? Does engaging in the arts at one time predict prosocial behavior 7 years later? And vice versa? We include soc...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - July 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The spectatorship of portraits by naïve beholders.
The spectatorship of portraits by naïve viewers (beholders) was explored in a single experiment. Twenty-five participants rated their liking for 142 portraits painted by Courbet (36 paintings), Fantin-Latour (36 paintings), and Manet (70 paintings) on a 4-point Likert scale. The portraits were classified in terms of focused versus ambiguous nature of sitter gaze and the presence of salient features in the context beyond sitters. Participants rated portraits while having their eye movements recorded. The portraits were split into regions of interest (ROIs) defined by faces, bodies, and context. Participants also completed ...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - July 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Liking for abstract and representational art: National identity as an art appreciation heuristic.
Attitudes toward artwork are influenced by many individual and societal factors. One factor that has not been investigated is whether the viewer considers the artist to be an ingroup or an outgroup member. Drawing on 2 social psychological theories—social identity theory and uncertainty-identity theory—we proposed that people can show ingroup bias in evaluating artwork, and that this is more likely when the viewer lacks art-related expertise and experience. We conducted a 3-factor mixed between- and within-participants experiment (N = 335). American and Italian participants evaluated 2 pieces of abstract art and two pi...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - July 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Eudaimonia, hedonia, and fan behavior: Examining the motives of fans of fictional texts.
Fans of fictional texts engage with the texts of which they are fans in ways that are powerful and complex. What motivates fans to attend to their preferred texts, however, is as yet unclear. In a survey of U.S. adults, participants answered questions about their fan behaviors, the degree to which they identify as fans, and the motives that drive their attention to their preferred texts. Results indicate that fans are motivated by both hedonic and eudaimonic motives, and that stronger motives are associated with stronger fan identification. In addition, both types of motive are associated with engaging in fan behaviors cha...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - July 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Does activist art have the capacity to raise awareness in audiences?—A study on climate change art at the ArtCOP21 event in Paris.
The goal of this study was to investigate whether activist art can have a stimulating psychological effect on its spectators. This question is examined in art specifically related to climate change. With the aim of inspiring public engagement and communicating environmental issues to spark a climate change movement, ArtCOP21 is a global festival that took place simultaneously to the United Nations climate change negotiations (Conference of the Parties [COP21]) 2015 in Paris. Eight hundred seventy-four spectators responded to a questionnaire on their perception of 37 selected artworks. In an explorative study using cluster ...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - July 1, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Transactions between adolescents’ after school activities and divergent thinking.
This research examined the transactions between adolescents’ after school activities and their divergent thinking. Three times over the course of 18 months, American and Chinese adolescents (N = 566) filled out open-ended surveys about how they spend their time after school and completed a set of divergent thinking tasks. Adolescents’ reports of their after school activities were coded into 4 mutually exclusive categories: Personal academic (e.g., studying alone), personal nonacademic (e.g., watching TV alone), social nonacademic (e.g., playing sports with friends), and social academic (e.g., working on group projects)...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - June 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

From dropping out to dropping in: Exploring why individuals cease participation in musical activities and the support needed to reengage them.
Continued participation in music has been associated with well-being outcomes, yet many either fail to begin or cease musical participation after limited exposure. The current research examined why individuals cease participating, focusing on identifying barriers to participation and the support needed to reengage in musical activities. A sample of 190 Australian residents (Mage = 26.87; 75.80% female) who had ceased previous musical participation completed an online questionnaire in which they rated the degree to which 15 items reflected their reasons for ceasing musical participation and answered an open-ended question r...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - June 24, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Supervisor Idea Adoption Scale: Construction, reliability, and initial validity evidence.
Despite the importance of workplace innovation, the adoption of creative ideas at workplace level has received little attention due to a lack of measures for idea adoption. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a scale that measures employees’ perceptions of the process of idea adoption. Specifically, the scale assesses employee perceptions of their supervisor’s behavior in terms of idea openness, selection and application. Three studies were conducted to develop the supervisor idea adoption scale and investigate the scale scores’ psychometric properties (Study 1, n = 326); concurrent, convergent and ...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - June 24, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research